Ford's 200-mph, 770-hp Hydrogen Fuel Cell Record Breaker: How It Works (with Video)

Oct 1, 2009

UPDATE (Aug. 16): They did it! Yesterday, the Ford Fusion 999 team ran 207.297 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats, establishing the fastest unofficial time ever run by a hydrogen-powered vehicle. Scroll down for record-breaking video!

This car is about to go down in history. Unless any mechanical maladies or foul weather foils the plan, by this time tomorrow, the Ford Fusion 999 may just become the fastest hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle ever to speed across the Bonneville Salt Flats. The run—or runs, depending on the conditions—will take place during the annual Bonneville Speed Week August 10-17 near Wendover, Utah.

Expected to reach speeds in excess of 200 mph, the Fusion 999 is a joint venture between Ford's Sustainable Mobility Technologies Group (responsible for all of the alternate-fuel and hybrid vehicles produced by the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker), Ballard Power Systems (fuel cell manufacturers), Ohio State University and its team of young Bonneville racers, and Roush Racing. Ford has been working with Ballard on fuel cells for years, and with Roush on NASCAR racing for two decades, but it was the Ohio State student group that came up with the idea to go racing with a hydrogen fuel cell car, and Ford agreed to fund the project.

Why go to all this trouble and expense? The goal of the race experiment is to show that hydrogen fuel cell propulsion is safe, viable and scaleable, meaning that the tanks, systems, motors and vehicle can all be made smaller, lighter and more compact—the formula for zero-emission production cars.

But the Hydrogen 999 is a pure race car, and it's built like one. Engineers used an extremely complex tubular chassis design to accommodate all the 999's systems, including NASCAR-style brakes, steering and suspension, plus two drag chutes to help stop the 6700-pound beast after every run down the strip.

It carries two huge, high-pressure hydrogen tanks and a third tank for a 60/40 mixture of helium and oxygen. These gases are mixed and fed into a gigantic fuel cell mounted under the Fusion's body. The pressurized helium/oxygen mixture allows the fuel cells to generate more power than ambient air because of its higher oxygen content, and high-pressure storage eliminates the need for an air compressor. The system's greater energy density and lighter weight, then, significantly improving the car's chances of reaching 200 mph.

The Ford-designed, 350-kw fuel cell system is comprised of 16 Ballard Mk902 fuel cell rows. The DC current generated by the fuel cell stack is fed into an inverter, which converts it to AC current. That current then spins a huge, 770-hp electric motor mounted at the rear of the car and mated to a Ricardo 6-speed manual transmission—on loan from a Ford GT supercar to give the 999 some accelerator giddyup on the salt.

The fuel cell engineers and aerodynamicists worked together to decrease the Fusion 999's drag coefficient from 0.34 to 0.21. The Fusion body was lowered and cleverly massaged on the front, side and rear to give it much better high-speed aerodynamics, which is just as important as horsepower is at the Salt Flats.

Bonneville veteran and 200-mph club member Rick Byrnes, a Ford retiree, will pilot the car on every pass. —Jim McCraw

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